Prerelease 3.088 (Efficiency/RAM improvements, auto-explore mode, bugfixes)

[triggerman602]

also putting a teleporting unit into this mode causes the galaxy to become explored almost instantly.

10 RRs got a 120 planet map explored in about a minute.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, right, a cloaked teleporter; I had tested it with normal engies and they did pretty well but not that well.

My thoughts on that (and related issues) are that teleportation should not work out of supply, but I seem to recall that coming up and people not being happy with the idea.

[Doddler]

Perhaps only units with scout abilities could be used for the auto explore command?  Or more harshly, only scouts can explore unexplored warps?

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I am thinking the auto-explore-on-scouts-only thing is a good idea... but on the other hand all that's doing is issuing commands for you; there's nothing stopping you from using an RR to explore every single wormhole manually, except the pain of it, the alleviation of which is entirely the point of an auto command.

As for having unexplored wormholes only be explorable by a scout... I like that   But dunno if others would.

[Saladien]

Hi,

i have seen a bug.
When i have for example 100000 metal and 100000 crystal and i have some things in production which takes away 100 from my 120 every tick i will become 20 every tick but some other number will be before my 100000 with a - . So After a sec i have 100020 but the number says for example -1630 each tick.

MfG

Saladien

[keith.lamothe]

That would be very odd if it were a result of the changes in this patch, as I didn't touch any of that (though who knows what all could have happened).  Are you sure that you're only using 120 of the resource per tick?  Could you post a screenshot of where it says 120, and where it says -1630?

Thanks,
Keith

[Saladien]

No that was in every build i played with since 2.0, but it only happens sometimes.
I will watch out if i can reproduce it mom.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, if it's a longstanding thing have you checked the "expenses by player" tab (or whatever it's called) in the score/stats screen (which can be found by clicking the score box in the bottom right)?  It gives you a breakdown of all income and expenditure, if I recall correctly, and it might tell you about something you didn't realize.

[Saladien]

here i have it

[Doddler]

Yea, I am thinking the auto-explore-on-scouts-only thing is a good idea... but on the other hand all that's doing is issuing commands for you; there's nothing stopping you from using an RR to explore every single wormhole manually, except the pain of it, the alleviation of which is entirely the point of an auto command.

As for having unexplored wormholes only be explorable by a scout... I like that   But dunno if others would.

Right now when it comes to actually revealing the map it's a lot easier to throw up a few transports and scout everything using them than it is to actually use scouts, which is a bit of a mystery.

Although transports seem to have a huge list of uses right now that don't include transporting.

[keith.lamothe]

here i have it

Ah, you mean how the actual metal change (1374 - 1222 = +152) is different than the listed -238?  That's because you don't have enough crystal to meet your outflow and stuff that takes both metal and crystal to build takes it at the same time, so if it costs 200 metal and 200 crystal per tick and you only have 100 crystal, it will only spend 100 metal and 100 crystal per tick (well, not quite, the numbers get weird when one or more resources are really low).  Basically the numbers are not reliable when you're not able to pay all your current outflow

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I am thinking the auto-explore-on-scouts-only thing is a good idea... but on the other hand all that's doing is issuing commands for you; there's nothing stopping you from using an RR to explore every single wormhole manually, except the pain of it, the alleviation of which is entirely the point of an auto command.

As for having unexplored wormholes only be explorable by a scout... I like that   But dunno if others would.

Right now when it comes to actually revealing the map it's a lot easier to throw up a few transports and scout everything using them than it is to actually use scouts, which is a bit of a mystery.

Although transports seem to have a huge list of uses right now that don't include transporting.

Didn't we make it so that transports lose x% of their max health when traversing a wormhole out-of-supply?  That should cut down on what degree of deep scouting you can attain with them.  Or is it still allowing enough hops that it doesn't matter?

[Fleet]

Yea, I am thinking the auto-explore-on-scouts-only thing is a good idea... but on the other hand all that's doing is issuing commands for you; there's nothing stopping you from using an RR to explore every single wormhole manually, except the pain of it, the alleviation of which is entirely the point of an auto command.

As for having unexplored wormholes only be explorable by a scout... I like that   But dunno if others would.

Right now when it comes to actually revealing the map it's a lot easier to throw up a few transports and scout everything using them than it is to actually use scouts, which is a bit of a mystery.

Although transports seem to have a huge list of uses right now that don't include transporting.

Didn't we make it so that transports lose x% of their max health when traversing a wormhole out-of-supply?  That should cut down on what degree of deep scouting you can attain with them.  Or is it still allowing enough hops that it doesn't matter?

I think the current health hit on out-of-supply wormhole entries is quite balanced. Very annoying since I rather liked using them to scout the entire galaxy in one go, but it puts sane, reasonable limits on how far I can scout, and they still are useful for sending military ships a few hops out to cap planets. You know what bothers me most? Its not that I can't scout as far as I used to be able to...its that I have to wonder if my transports will even make it back on the return trip when I send them for reinforcements, or if they will succumb to wormhole damage en route. Can make for some annoying transport-rebuilding needs if I'm raiding a world fairly far away.

[Doddler]

Transports in general are kind of abusable.  They're good at releasing troops from an AI world for example, and if you stick them next to your defenses, enemies will shoot them instead of your tractors, turrrets, and ships.  On the other hand, I don't want transports to be nerfed because they're now actually worth using to transport things, but the non transport roles for a high hp high shield fast moving ship that the AI can't resist attacking is quite exceptional.

[keith.lamothe]

You know what bothers me most? Its not that I can't scout as far as I used to be able to...its that I have to wonder if my transports will even make it back on the return trip when I send them for reinforcements, or if they will succumb to wormhole damage en route. Can make for some annoying transport-rebuilding needs if I'm raiding a world fairly far away.

Haha, yea, that is one of the more draconian aspects of the changes, but it was quite intentional that you basically had to choose between a half-distance round-trip or a full-distance last-trip